SHOW LINKS

• The AntiBot
• Genetically Modified Skeptic
• Drag Me To Hell, Louisville KY
• Patron Sinner Nominations!
• From I traveled to Jerusalem to face my fear of hell, Genetically Modified Skeptic, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGvcRnlId4k 
• From Heaven & Hell, Bart Ehrman, 2020: Some of my high school friends were committed Christian kids who believed it was necessary to make an active and specific commitment to god by asking Jesus into my heart. They convinced me, and as a 15-year-old I became a born again Christian. From that point on I had no doubt I was going to heaven. I was equally convinced that those who would not make this commitment were going to hell. Believing this made me a christian on a mission. It is not at all unlikely that I was more than a little obnoxious about it. After graduating from a fundamentalist College I chose to pursue the study of the New Testament and went to Princeton Theological Seminary. It was there I started having doubts about my faith. These doubts disturbed me not only because I wanted very much to know the truth but also because I was afraid of the possible eternal consequences of getting things wrong. Would my soul be in serious trouble? There was a particular moment when these worries hit me with special poignancy: It involved a late-night sauna. To pay for grad school I went to a part-time job at a tennis club. Most days of the week I was on the late shift. One of the benefits of the job was that I could take advantage of the facilities, including the sauna, when the place was shut up. The evening in question I’d been sweeping the courts and thinking about everything I’ve been hearing and resisting in my biblical studies and theology courses. I decided to have a sauna. I cranked up the heat as high as it could go and sat down to have a good after work sweat. As I sat on the wooden bench all alone late at night perspiring, I returned to my doubts about my faith. I then I started realizing, wow it sure is hot in here! Oh man is it hot in here! And then naturally the thought struck me: Did I want to be trapped in a massively overheated sauna for all eternity? Is it worth it? For me at that moment that meant: Did I want to change my beliefs and risk eternal torment? Suffice to say that I did eventually begin to change. As a friend of mine, a Methodist Minister, sometimes jokes, I went from being born again to being dead again. A recent Pew research poll showed that 72% of all Americans agree that there was a literal heaven where people go when they die. 58% believe that an actual literal hell. These numbers are of course down seriously from previous generations but are still impressive. One of the surprising things is that these do not go back to the earliest stages of Christianity. They cannot be found in the Old Testament, and they are not what Jesus himself taught. There was a time when literally no one thought that t their soul would go to heaven or hell. But eventually people came to think that this could not be right, largely because it was not fair. If there are gods with anything like a moral code then there must be Justice, in this life and the next. The ideas of the afterlife that so many billions of people have inherited emerged over a long struggle with how this world can be fair and how god can be just, which Jews and Christians came up with over a long period of time that they tried to explain the injustice of the world and the ultimate triumph of good. 

• From The Apocalypse of Peter, Anonymous, Second Century CE…ish: And I saw the place of punishment. There were certain there hanging by the tongue: and these were the blasphemers. There was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which were certain men that pervert righteousness, and tormenting angels afflicted them. Women hanged by their hair over that mire that bubbled up, and these were they who adorned themselves for adultery. Men who mingled with them in the defilement of adultery were hanging by the feet and their heads in that mire. Murderers and those who conspired with them were cast into a place full of evil snakes, and the souls of the murdered looked upon the punishment of those murderers and said: O God, thy judgment is just. I saw another place into which the gore and the filth of those who were being punished ran down and became there as it were a lake: and there sat women having the gore up to their necks, and over against them sat many children who were born to them out of due time, crying; and there came forth from them sparks of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion. And other men and women were burning up to the middle and were cast into a dark place and were beaten by evil spirits, and their inwards were eaten: these were they who persecuted the righteous. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/apocalypsepeter-roberts.html

• From Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas, 1274: In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to god for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned. Whoever pities another shares somewhat in his unhappiness. But the blessed cannot share in any unhappiness. Therefore they do not pity the afflictions of the damned. Charity is the principle of pity when it is possible for us out of charity to wish the cessation of a person’s unhappiness. But the saints cannot desire this for the damned, since it would be contrary to Divine justice. The saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.  Further, envy reigns supreme in the damned. Therefore they grieve for the happiness of the blessed, and desire their damnation. Even as in the blessed in heaven there will be most perfect charity, so in the damned there will be the most perfect hate. Wherefore as the saints will rejoice in all goods, so will the damned grieve for all good. Consequently the sight of the happiness of the saints will give them very great pain, and they will wish all the good were damned. 
• From the Catholic Catechism, Holy See, 1992: We cannot be united with god unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love god if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves:  Our lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting god’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with god and the blessed is called “Hell.” Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted. The chief punishment of Hell is eternal separation from god, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of Hell are an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from god is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In daily prayers, the Church implores the mercy of god, who does not want any to perish but all to come to repentance.
• From Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God, John Edward, 1741: The damned deserve to be cast into hell, so divine justice never stands in the way of this nad makes no objection against god’s using his power at any moment to destroy them. On the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over our heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and god’s mere will, that holds it back. And the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment is not because God, in whose power they are, is not very angry with them, as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on Earth. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment god shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of god, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of god’s enemies. The world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of god. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath would come upon you with omnipotent power. The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow, and it is nothing but tan angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. The god that holds you over the pit of hell abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent. You have offended him infinitely more. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not go to Hell last night but that god’s hand has held you up. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and you have  nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce god to spare you one moment.
• From The Devil: A New Biography, Phillip Almond, 2014: For Gregory the Great, the victory of Christ left Satan imprisoned in the bottomless pit, though he would be released again for the final battle at the end of history. However, the continued existence of evil in the world required explanation. So while Satan as “historically” imprisoned in Hell, he was “allegorically” still in the world. According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, demons were both the keepers and tormenters of the dead, although in an alternate text of Nicodeums Satan was not a prisoner in Hell to begin with but was cast into the fires after Christ conquers death. The idea that Satan was incarcerated along with his demons was a tradition that went back at least to the First Book of Enoch, yet remained present. It was a problem over which many puzzled intellectually. To some, the devil and his angels lived in the air beneath Heaven, in order that they should not excessively harass men, and for this reason Lucifer was called the Prince of the Air. On the last day they would be cast down to Hell. Bishop Peter Lombard ambiguously wrote that some demons are in the air and some are in Hell, and that devils come and go to Hell on a daily basis, so that there are always some of them to torture souls. This was hardly a persuasive compromise. The Franciscan writer Bonaventure, in writing on Lombard, ignored the issue of Lucifer being in Hell and located him in the air, since there was no redemption in Hell and if the fallen angels were there they would be unable to ascend to our world to tempt us. Thomas Aquinas, arguably the greatest of Christian theologians, was unable to resolve the paradox of Satan being bound in Hell and being active among men, or at least we can conclude this from his not having taken up the issue.
• From Really Believing In Hell, Keith DeRose, Yale Department of Philosophy, 2008: Richard Dawkins’s comparison of sexual abuse to being taught doctrines of hell as a child were the subject of some great outrage. Never having been the victim of sexual abuse myself, knowing little about what that must be like, I don’t want to get into the comparative issue here. But some of the outraged seemed to be quite sure that being taught nasty doctrines of hell could not be seriously harmful at all, and that I do want to dispute. As someone who spent many sleepless, terrified nights as a child, I can certainly empathize with this When I was around 7, I got the message that Hell is a place I absolutely do not want to go to loud and clear. And it did terrorize me–and not just worries that I might end up there, but terror at the thought of anyone ending up in such a place. The combination of eternal duration with unspeakable torment really got to me. In a later post I hope to go into the effects – some of them lasting to this day – beyond nightmares. Why do some people who accept a traditional doctrine of hell experience debilitating terror while others don’t? My guess is that having the ability to understand and appreciate the doctrine without (yet) having developed the ability to “quarantine” threatening beliefs is to blame. As a child I really believed a traditional doctrine of hell. Some believers only kinda believe it–and kinda don’t. By the time I was 12, though I still accepted a traditional doctrine of hell, I only kinda believed, as opposed to my earlier, terrorized real belief. The “quarantining”of the doctrine wasn’t a simple matter of fully retaining the belief while blocking it from having some of its corrosive effects. Rather, it seems to me, it reduced the extent to which I could accurately be described as a believer at all. By that time, I didn’t really believe anymore. https://campuspress.yale.edu/keithderose/really-believing-in-hell/ 
• From Religious Abuse Damned To Hell, Carolyn Gage, 2011: It strikes me as a serious political issue, as well as one of children’s rights and one that needs to be understood in the light of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that most Americans believe in Hell. What exactly does it mean that the majority of folks in my country actually believe that they face the possibility of a lake of burning hellfire at the end of their lives? What does it mean that the majority of folks in my country believe that the universe is governed by a tyrannical despot capable of devising this form of torture? Honestly, I can’t even imagine taking these propositions seriously. How do any of these believers ever have a nice day? I was able to outgrow and outlive my abusive human father; for believers in hell, there is no way out. That, in a nutshell, is the definition of trauma: the unacceptable that must be accepted. Black-and-white thinking with good-versus-evil moral codes may keep one out of hell in an afterlife, but they are set-ups for fascist propaganda that leads to the creation of hell on earth. The entire notion of sin stems from a kind of universal depersonalization. Might this take the form of patriarchal structures that replicate imagined scenarios of Judgment Day? Or waging wars to project an overwhelming fear of sinfulness onto some “other” who can then be appropriately punished, the more fiery the punishment the better? Are the infernal weapons of modern warfare some subconscious attempt to gain godlike control over the dreaded hellfire? As lesbian-feminists, we can educate people that religious freedom does not include the right to spiritually abuse. And in doing this work, we can also take the opportunity to look at our own beliefs about an afterlife. Is our end also contained in our beginning? Personally, I find purpose, peace and morality in an observation made by feminist sociologist and novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.” https://carolyngage.weebly.com/blog/religious-abuse-damned-to-hell 
• From The Christians, Daniel Walker, 2017: “The Christians,” now playing at San Francisco Playhouse, goes where seemingly few shows dare to tread: Into the spiritual beliefs of everyday Americans. Anthony Fusco plays the pastor of a multi-million dollar mega church, the kind you see on TV headed up by men who always seem a bit like they’re trying to sell a timeshare–in this case, an eternal one. Then one day he gets up at the pulpit and begins preaching a new, slightly radical, much more liberally-minded lesson: Hell, it seems, doesn’t actually exist; everyone gets into heaven after all. Yes, even Hitler, he admits. It’s okay if people don’t quite understand this new idea, our Pastor adds, because god, it seems, has given him this revelation personally–and you can’t very well argue with that. Except his younger and more ambitious protege (Lance Gardner, as the only character in the play who gets an actual name, “Joshua,” with all that that entails) decides that he’ll argue anyway–right there at the pulpit in front of everyone. Even though they’re arguing about ancient scripture, the dispute does not come off as academic: religion, after all, is always personal. When Gardner returns later in the play for a second confrontation, his monologue about damnation sends chills down the spine. More people spend time wrestling with religious questions like these than, say, questions about physics and consciousness that come up in Tom Stoppard plays. So why isn’t there more theater about it? Most of the flock sides at first with the Pastor, but cracks soon form in his new vision. Eventually even his long-silent wife played by Stephanie Prentice can’t keep her customary silence up anymore, and the tension of their conversation is wounding. Fusco is almost TOO good at communicating the frozen, half-confused panic of someone who has been caught in the act but only just realized it himself. Director Bill English gives “The Christians” an anxious quality, like a stress nightmare, with Michael Oesch’s lights casting an increasingly gloomy pall as church fortunes go down. 

The post Episode 219: Why the Hell Do People Believe In Hell? appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• From Genesis 2-3, King James Version: And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree; the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God commanded, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. tNow the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, The woman whom thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Unto the woman he said, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Unto Adam he said, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And the Lord God said, man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

• The Bible and the ancient Near East, Gordon & rendsburg, revised 1998 Ed: Man is intelligent because he ate magic fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, gaining knowledge that up to that time had been a monopoly of divinity. It is interesting to note that the knowledge imparted by the fruit of this tree is the “knowledge of good and evil,” a much misunderstood phrase. The antonyms “good and evil” represent “everything.” The same expression in inverted order occurs in Egyptian, where “evil-good” means everything, and from Greek literature we may cite the words of Telemachus, “I know all things, the good and the evil”. The only reason that readers of the Bible have failed to grasp the proper understanding of “the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil” is that the traditional interpretation is so deeply entrenched. Thus man obtained universal knowledge and to that extent shares with god a divine prerogative. Mankind was driven out of paradise because God saw that man could not be trusted to obey His will and to refrain from eating the fruit of another tree in the Garden of Eden that would give man immortality. God decided that man should not obtain immortality lest he become like the gods. Accordingly, if we examine the story in Genesis objectively, we see that, while many elements go into making up the whole picture, it is not so much an account of the “Fall of Man” but rather of the rise of man halfway to divinity. He obtained one of the two prerogatives or characteristics of the gods: intelligence; but he was checked by God from obtaining immortality, which would have made him quite divine. 

• From The Knowledge of Good and Evil as the Knowledge, Nathan French: A range of commentators suggest that the primary interpretation should be toward a contextualized meaning of “beneficial” and the “harmful.” I will demonstrate that the principle of divine retribution, in relation to ‘some’ experiences of ‘good and bad/evil,’ assumes the divine agency of reward and punishment through blessing and cursing. Additionally, it will be shown that these texts reveal an interplay between human and divine retribution as indication of divinely sanctioned retribution through ‘blessing and cursing.’ Thus, the words that generally mean “knowledge of good and evil” in their target languages often appear within these literary contexts signifying the whole of the retributive process, from discrimination to response, the fruit of the knowledge of reward & punishment. It is the knowledge for administering reward and punishment that empowers humans to become judges with ultimate power, like Yahweh himself. The divine knowledge is forbidden since it is ultimate power for retribution. In this way, Yahweh’s reward and punishment serve as his tools for establishing a particular political and social order, a body politic. Knowledge of good and evil represents the advancement from childlike innocence to moral decision.

• From Loss of Immortality, Konrad Schmid, University of Teubingen, 2008: Especially within the Christian tradition, there is a widespread notion that the first human beings were created to be immortal, making physical death the bitter consequence of human sin. However, there are also some newer approaches that see death as a natural part of creation, while death only becomes a frightening and threatening element under the influence of sin. At first glance, the traditional notion of an original immortality which was lost after the fall would fit perfectly into the Paradise story: This would be just another element contrasting the situations before the fall and after. In addition, God’s threat “you shall surely die” would be narratively fulfilled. Humankind, after its fall, has to die. But upon further review, there are far too many problems for such a thesis. First, Gen 2:7 states: “YHWH God formed man from the dust of the ground.” “Dust” in the Hebrew Bible functions clearly as a metaphor for transience, for being mortal. Secondly, in the punishment sentences in Gen 3:14-19, there is only one instance where the topic of death is brought up. This verse does not claim that humankind from now on has to die in contrast to the situation before. Death is not mentioned among the elements of punishment themselves. In Gen 3:22 God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of lif, and eat, and live forever. “‘ This sentence apparently does not reckon with the possibility that the human beings could again become immortal after having lost their original immortality a short while earlier. Rather, the prohibition of the tree of life is now mandatory, because after the humans have gained knowledge, immortality is the main element which still very clearly distinguishes God and humans.

• The prevalent Christian interpretation which sees the primitive status of humankind as immortals is the result of an apocalyptic perspective on the paradise story which was historically alien to it. Genesis 3 is probably one of the most non-eschatological texts of the Bible, as is evident especially from its final verse: “[The Lord God] drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.” The angels with their sword stand for the conviction that paradise is lost forever. The Paradise story tries to explain how the present conditions of human life outside the paradise came about. lt is not interested in painting out  a model for eschatological expectations. The common Christian interpretation has thoroughly transformed this, as can be seen for example from a famous German hymn by Nicolaus Hermann which ends with the words: “Today, Christ unlocks the door to the beautiful paradise, the cherub no longer stands in front of it.” But in Genesis, there is no way back, never ever. The Bible obviously sees no problems in determining human life – as it was designed by the creator – as substantially limited. Genesis 2-3 seems to present the wish to become immortal as a real wish only for fallen humanity. Immortality as such does not seem to be theologically important.

• From Adam & Eve & The Serpent, Elaine Pagels: In their arguments from Scripture, Jewish teachers often avoided speaking directly about sexual practices but engaged in heated discussions about Adam, Eve, and the serpent, and in this metaphorical way revealed what they thought about sexuality and about human nature in general. The Book of Jubilees, for example, written about 150 years before Jesus’ birth by a Palestinian Jew, retells the story of Adam and Eve to prove, among other things, that Jewish customs concerning childbirth and nakedness were not arbitrary or trivial but actually built into human nature from the beginning. As this author tells it, Adam entered Eden during the first week of creation, but Eve entered the garden only during the second week; this explains why a woman who gives birth to a male child remains ritually impure for one week, while she who bears a female remains impure for two weeks. The author goes on to recall that God made garments for Adam and Eve, and clothed them before expelling them from Paradise; this shows that Jews must “cover their shame, and not go naked, as the Gentiles do,” in public places like the baths and the gymnasia. Throughout subsequent generations, what Jews and Christians read into the creation accounts of Genesis came, for better and worse, to shape what later came to be called tradition. Meanwhile certain radical gnostics, railed against marriage and procreation and against the God who had created such impurities. This radical teacher dared to tell the story of Paradise from the serpent’s point of view, and depicted the serpent as a teacher of divine wisdom: ‘For the serpent was wiser than any of the animals that were in Paradise. . . . But the creator cursed the serpent, and called him devil. And he said, “Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing evil and good.’ What kind of God is this? First, he envied Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge. . . . And secondly he said, ‘Adam, where are you?’ So God does not have foreknowledge, since he did not know this from the beginning. And afterwards, he said, ‘Let us cast him [out] of this place lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.’ Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious envier. And what kind of God is this? Great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know it.’” What church leader would not bridle at a critic who turned the Genesis account upside down?

• From Justin Martyr, Dialogues, Second Century: Then what is next said in the Psalm —’For trouble is near, for there is none to help me. Many calves have compassed me; fat bulls have beset me round. All my bones are poured out and dispersed like water,’— was likewise a prediction of the events which happened to Christ. For on that night when some of your [Roman] nation, who had been sent by the Pharisees and Scribes, and teachers, came upon Him from the Mount of Olives, surrounded Him. And the expression, ‘Fat bulls have beset me round,’ He spoke beforehand of those who acted similarly to the calves, when He was led before your teachers. And the expression, ‘For there is none to help,’ is also indicative of what took place. For there was not even a single man to assist Him as an innocent person. ‘They opened their mouth upon me like a roaring lion,’ designates him who was then king of the Jews, and was called Herod, a successor of the Herod who, when Christ was born, slew all the infants in Bethlehem born about the same time, because he imagined that among them He would assuredly be of whom the Magi from Arabia had spoken; Or He meant the devil by the lion roaring against Hi,: whom Moses calls the serpent, but in Job and Zechariah he is called Satan, and by Jesus is addressed as devil, showing that a compounded name was acquired by him from the deeds which he performed. For ‘Sata’ in the Jewish and Syrian tongue means apostate; and ‘Nas’ is the word from which he is called by interpretation the serpent. We may perceive that the Father wished His Son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes, and may not say that He, being the Son of God, did not feel what was happening to Him and inflicted on Him. 

• From How the Serpent Became Satan, Shawna Dolansky, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2016: Introduced as “the most clever of all of the beasts of the field that YHWH God had made,” the serpent in the Garden of Eden is portrayed as just that: a serpent. Satan does not make an appearance in Genesis for the simple reason that when the story was written, the concept of the devil had not yet been invented. Explaining the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan would have been as foreign a concept to the ancient authors of the text as referring to Ezekiel’s vision as a UFO. In fact, while the word satan appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, it is never a proper name; since there is no devil in ancient Israel’s worldview, there can’t yet have been a proper name for such a creature. After the canon of the Hebrew Bible closed beliefs in angels, demons and a final apocalyptic battle arose in a divided and turbulent Jewish community. In light of this impending end, many turned to a renewed understanding of the beginning, and the Garden of Eden was re-read—and re-written—to reflect the changing ideas of a changed world. Satan became the proper name of the devil, a supernatural power now seen to oppose God as the leader of demons and the forces of evil; and the serpent in the Garden of Eden came to be identified with him. In 1 Enoch, the “angel” who “led Eve astray” and “showed the weapons of death to the children of men” was called Gadriel, not Satan. Around the same time, the Wisdom of Solomon taught that “through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who are on his side suffer it.” Though this may very well be the earliest reference to Eden’s serpent as the devil, in neither text, nor in any document we have until after the New Testament, is satan clearly understood as the serpent.

• Although the author of Revelation describes Satan as “the ancient serpent”, there is no clear link anywhere in the Bible between Satan and the serpent in the garden. The ancient Near Eastern combat myth motif, exemplified in the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, typically depicted the bad guy as a serpent. The characterization of Leviathan in Isaiah reflects such myths nicely: “On that day YHWH will punish With his hard and big and strong sword Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisted serpent, And he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.: So the reference in Revelation to Satan as “the ancient serpent” probably reflects mythical monsters like Leviathan rather than the creature in Eden. In the New Testament, Satan and his demons have the power to enter and possess people; this is what is said to have happened to Judas. When Paul re-tells the story of Adam and Eve, he places the blame on the humans and not on fallen angels or on the serpent or Satan; still, the conflation begged to be made, and it will seem natural for later Christian authors—Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus and Augustine, for example—to assume Satan’s association with Eden’s snake. Most famously, in the 17th century, John Milton elaborates Satan’s role in the Garden poetically, in great detail in Paradise Lost. But this connection is still not forged anywhere in the Bible.

• • From Commentary on the Bible, Matthew Henry, 1706: It is certain it was the devil that beguiled Eve. The devil and Satan is the old serpent, a malignant spirit, by creation an angel of light and an immediate attendant upon God’s throne, but by sin become an apostate from his first state and a rebel against God’s crown and dignity. Observe here: He does not discover his design at first, but puts a question which seemed innocent: “I hear a piece of news, pray is it true? has God forbidden you to eat of this tree?” Thus he would begin a discourse, and draw Eve into a parley. Those that would be safe have need to be suspicious, and shy of talking with the tempter. He quotes the command fallaciously, as if it were a prohibition, not only of that tree, but of all. God had said, Of every tree you may eat, except one. He, by aggravating the exception, endeavours to invalidate the concession: Hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree? The divine law cannot be reproached unless it be first misrepresented. He seems to speak it tauntingly, upbraiding the woman with her shyness of meddling with that tree; as if he had said, “You are so nice and cautious, and so very precise, because God has said, ‘You shall not eat.’ The devil, as he is a liar, so he is a scoffer, from the beginning: and the scoffers of the last days are his children. That which he aimed at in the first onset was to take off her sense of the obligation of the command. “Surely you are mistaken, it cannot be that God should tie you out from this tree; he would not do so unreasonable a thing.” See here, That it is the subtlety of Satan to blemish the reputation of the divine law as uncertain or unreasonable, and so to draw people to sin; and that it is therefore our wisdom to keep up a firm belief of, and a high respect for, the command of God. In answer to this question the woman gives him a plain and full account of the law they were under. It was her weakness to enter into discourse with the serpent. She might have perceived by his question that he had no good design.. But her curiosity, and perhaps her surprise, to hear a serpent speak, led her into further talk with him. Note, It is a dangerous thing to treat with a temptation, which ought at first to be rejected with disdain and abhorrence. The garrison that sounds a parley is not far from being surrendered. “You shall not die,” he says, so the word is, in direct contradiction to what God had said. Thus Satan endeavours to shake that which he cannot overthrow.
  • From the Book of Adam & Eve, Anonymous, Sixth Century: Then Adam said unto God, “Lord, Thou didst create us, and make us [fit] to be in the garden; and before I transgressed, Thou madest all beasts come to me, that I should name them. Thy grace was then on me; and I named every one according to Thy mind; and Thou madest them all subject unto me. But now, Lord God, that I have transgressed Thy commandment, all beasts will rise against me and will devour me, and Eve Thy handmaid; and will cut off our life from the face of the earth. I therefore beseech Thee, God, that, since Thou hast made us come out of the garden, and hast made us be in a strange land, Thou wilt not let the beasts hurt us.” When the Lord heard these words from Adam, He had pity on him, and felt that he had truly said that the beasts [of the field] would rise and devour him and Eve, because He, the Lord, was angry with them [two] on account of their transgression. Then God commanded the beasts, and the birds, and all that moves upon the earth, to come to Adam and to be familiar with him,† and not to trouble him and Eve; nor yet any of the good and righteous among their posterity. Then the beasts did obeisance to Adam, according to the commandment of God; except the serpent, against which God was wroth. It did not come to Adam. Then Adam and Eve came out at the mouth of the cave, and went towards the garden. But as they drew near to it, before the western gate, from which Satan came when he deceived Adam and Eve, they found the serpent that became Satan coming at the gate. And whereas aforetime [the serpent] was the most exalted of all beasts, now it was changed and become slippery, and the meanest of them all, and it crept on its breast and went on its belly. 

• When the accursed serpent saw Adam and Eve, it swelled its head, stood on its tail, and with eyes blood-red, did as if it would kill them. It made straight for Eve, and ran after her; while Adam standing by, wept because he had no stick in his hand wherewith to smite the serpent, and knew not how to put to death. But with a heart burning for Eve, Adam approached the serpent, and held it by the tail; when it turned towards him and said unto him:– “Adam, because of thee and of Eve, I am slippery, and go upon my belly.” Then by reason of its great strength, it threw down Adam and Eve and pressed upon them, as if it would kill them. But God sent an angel who threw the serpent away from them, and raised them up. Then the Word of God came to the serpent, and said unto it, “In the first instance I made thee glib, and made thee to go upon thy belly; but I did not deprive thee of speech. “Now, however, be thou dumb ; and speak no more, thou and thy race31 because in the first place, has the ruin My creatures happened through thee, and now thou wishest to kill them.”* Then the serpent was struck dumb, and spake no more. And a wind came to blow from heaven by command of God, that carried away the serpent from Adam and Eve, threw it on the sea shore, and it landed in India.

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The post Episode 188 – Satanists Read the Bible III (Year of the Serpent) appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Of all the books in Lucifer’s Library, one is overdue more often than all the others. But in the 50-plus years since the publication of the Satanic Bible, what has the world been saying about it, and how should these perspectives inform our own?

SHOW LINKS

• A Journey to Hell: My Visit to the Houston Satanic Temple’s Art Show, Michael Hardy (2022)
• Marburg Journal of Religion: Diabolical Authority: Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible and the Satanist “Tradition,” James R. Lewis (2002)
• Satanism: A Social History, by Massimo Introvigne (2016)
• Reading and Writing Scripture in New Religious Movements: New Bibles and New Revelations, by Eugene Gallagher (2014)
• Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture, by Bill Ellis (2004)
• In Pursuit of Satan: The Police and the Occult, by Robert D. Hicks (1991)
• Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion, by Joseph P. Laycock (2020)

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The post Episode 136 – Satanic Bible 2: The Revenge appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

For five years here at Black Mass Appeal we’ve strived to pass around the fruit of knowledge and answer everyone’s questions about Satanism, Satanists and non-Satanists alike. But we can’t reach everyone, and some people have instead gone looking for wisdom on the wrong places, like Quora and the dearly departed Yahoo Answers. So today we’re answering the burning questions that nobody asked us… but probably should have.

SHOW LINKS

• The More Deadly Podcast: Satanic Panic
• The Satanic Coloring Book!
• New Yorker: Farewell, Global Liberal Cannibalistic Pedophile Conspiracy!, Robert Carlock (2022)
• Ashema Deva’s online store

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The post Episode 126 – Burning Questions appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Steve Hill is a Satanist, a comedian, a veteran, an atheist, an appraiser, and if he has his way, a Congressman, and he’s here to talk about his Satan 4 Congress campaign.

SHOW LINKS

• Buzzfeed: These Women Say An Essential Oil MLM Has Been Taken Over By Satan. Yes, Really.
• Steve Hill’s website, Satan 4 Congress
• Steve Hill’s Twitter and Facebook
• LAist: Meet Steve Hill, The Satanist Running For California Senate (2016)
• Steve Hill on the Dope Dealers podcast
• Steve Hill on The Devil You Don’t Know podcast

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The post Episode 117 – Satan 4 Congress: Steve Hill appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

It’s time for the Com-passion of the Anti-christ, as Seattle Satanist Lilith Starr’s new book Compassionate Satanism explores the beliefs and practices of Modern Satanists in the 21st century.

SHOW LINKS

• Snopes: Converse Didn’t Replace Logo
• LilithStarr.com: Compassionate Satanism

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The post Episode 103 – Compassionate Satanism appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Lucifer is the prince of the east, but how far east does his influence extend? Today we’re touring Satanism and subculture in Japan, with the help of travel and fashion writer La Carmina and cultural anthropologist Dr. John Skutlin.

SHOW LINKS

• The Australian: Devil worshipers celebrate ‘important win for religious freedom’
• La Carmina on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and her blog
• Dr. John Skutlin on Twitter and Facebook
• “Satanic Show and Tell” on Twitter
• Goth in Japan: finding identity in a spectacular subculture
• Roadtrippers: Salem’s Satanic Temple hosts macabre art and movie nights in a former funeral home
• The Daily Beast: Descend Into the World’s 10 Most Devilish Destinations
• LA Weekly: Western Goth vs Japanese Goth: La Carmina explains the difference
• University of San Francisco: Fashioning Tattooed Bodies: An Exploration of Japan’s Tattoo Stigma

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The post Episode 90 – Satanism In Japan appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Here at Black Mass Appeal, we believe in the right not to believe in anything, but atheism is still pretty atypical in America. Here to share her lack of faith, we are joined by Mandisa Thomas, president and founder of the non-profit Black Nonbelievers, to talk with us about atheism in America.

SHOW LINKS

• Mandisa Thomas on Twitter and Patreon
• Black Nonbelievers’ website
• Black Nonbelievers on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

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The post Episode 79 – Atheism appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

The post Episode 46 – Digital Demons with John Romero appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.